If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction.
Even though the plant shut down the production of electricity, the nuclear reaction keeps generating heat.
In the test at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, "dummy" fuel rods were used, so no nuclear reaction began.
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It works by using electricity generated from a nuclear reaction to accelerate charged particles out of the back of the spacecraft.
Uranium 235 is the key material in starting a nuclear reaction, and its acquisition is the main problem facing states which want to go nuclear.
In April 2009, a control rod the shutdown device used to stop the nuclear reaction in a plant's core malfunctioned in Reactor No. 3 due to a leaking valve.
In fact his trick (and the reason why it might be possible to produce a nuclear reaction in such a small piece of apparatus) is that what he does propose is not really fusion at all.
It was in a University of Chicago squash court that Enrico Fermi set off the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in 1942.
In Japan in 1999, an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction at a uranium-reprocessing plant killed two employees and spewed radioactive neutrons over the countryside.
Ouchi and his colleagues had just set off the one thing that nuclear workers fear most - a spontaneous, uncontained nuclear chain reaction.
This meant likely degradation of their zirconium alloy cladding, the possible release of hydrogen, and - by Tepco's admission - the risk that a nuclear chain reaction could begin.
Further, if Japan rearms and goes nuclear in reaction to the new circumstances on the Korean peninsula, the rationale for the U.S. military presence there may be diminished as well.
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Another possibility--the most disturbing one, actually--is that the North Koreans had been telling the truth when on May 12, just two days before South Korea detected the high levels of xenon, they announced they had created a nuclear fusion reaction, a step necessary to the building of a thermonuclear device.
The company noted that European coal generation increased 13% in June over the last 12 months as a result of nuclear cutbacks, a knee-jerk reaction to nuclear power given the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, and higher gas prices, further feeding demand for coal.
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Meanwhile, what cause would be served by setting off a nuclear chain-reaction that would detonate a bomb under the disarmament progress so far, sour relations with China and provoke Pakistan then maybe Iran into going nuclear too?
"The air quality is very bad here and any project with the word nuclear causes a negative reaction among people, " says Mr Danielevsky.
Fear and risk aversion rule the short term reaction to nuclear melt down in Japan, the 3rd largest economy in the world.
The North's angry reaction suggests UN nuclear inspectors will not be visiting shortly, despite a February agreement to let them in.
It has also cut off a hotline that connects the two countries in response to new sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test and as a reaction to annual US-South Korea military exercises.
If, as some have claimed, the IAF raid was a rehearsal for an Israeli or US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, then the international reaction to the IAF raid shows that such a mission will likely be met with minimal, if any, retrospective diplomatic opposition.
It says that the simulations focused on how shock waves from conventional explosives could compress the spherical fuel at the core of a nuclear device, which starts the chain reaction that ends in an explosion.
Yet while the reaction to Fukushima might slow the growth of nuclear power, it won't reverse it.
Or they can be introduced with uranium 235, which in this process has a much lower risk of an uncontrolled reaction than it does in today's nuclear plants.
The civil nuclear agreement -- did the Pakistani Prime Minister mention a civil nuclear agreement in this meeting, and did the President have any reaction to that?
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There is little reaction on Monday to North Korea's recent threat of a nuclear test in defiance of UN condemnation.
Ta Kung Pao contrasts China's reaction to its unprecedented harsh rebuke of Pyongyang "flagrantly conducting a nuclear test" for the first time in 2006.
They're asking themselves why are we saying all these and why are we provoking this international reaction against Iran at a time when Iran needs a lot of allies because of its nuclear program?
When there are worries about nuclear safety - such as following the tsunami in Japan - the Royal Society of Chemistry fears that the public reaction is still shaped by such emotive, negative associations.
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